Researchers say banking on hiring-manager evaluations was the
primary reason for hiring mistakes made last year.

By Kecia Bal

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Thanks to social media, hiring
managers often have greater access to background information than in years past,
and the sluggish economy has made for a wider pool of candidates for many
positions. So it follows that the number of successful new hires should be on
the rise, right?

Not so, according to a newly
released global study, which says many companies still do not know enough about
employees they hire.

In fact, the
actual process many companies employ for making a hiring decision is less
effective than a coin toss, says Scott Erker, who co-authored a forecast report
for Development Dimensions International, a Pittsburgh-based global consulting
firm. The 2012 reportaims to analyze hiring and selection strategies of
organizations worldwide.

“Unsuccessful hiring managers make three
major mistakes," Erker says. "They ask questions that do not give
them useful information about how the job candidate will actually perform on
the job. They don’t use a process to systematically evaluate the responses of
candidates, and they rely on gut instinct to make the final ‘go or no-go’
decision, ignoring critical information about the candidates’ fit to the
job."

In the study, which includes
responses from more than 250 staffing directors in 28 countries, responders
noted that one in eight new employees hired in the last 12 months were
failures. When staffing directors were asked what the top reasons were for
hiring mistakes, nearly one-third blamed overreliance on hiring-manager evaluations and 21 percent blamed candidates overselling
their own skills.

Why are hiring managers so ill-informed about the employees they
choose? Oftentimes, it appears hiring-manager evaluations are not tailored to
specific jobs, the study says.

Organizations need to identify, systematically and thoroughly, job-relevant
factors that predict success and use a variety of diagnostic tools to assess
candidates on those specific factors, the study suggests. Researchers say in
the report that only three in five organizations effectively determine what knowledge,
skills, abilities and experience their future employees should have.

Leaders at many organizations seem to recognize this fundamental
issue, study results show, as almost half of staffing directors who responded say
they plan to update their job analysis data in the next few years to improve
their selection system.

To make better hiring decisions, Erker
says HR needs to make key changes in the coming year.

"The first would be to comprehensively
define what’s required to be successful in the job," Erker says. "The
second would be to train hiring managers in a systematic process for
interviewing and evaluating job candidates. The training must include real
interviewing practice with feedback, not just teach interviewing concepts."

Elissa Tucker, a research program manager with APQC, a
Houston-based nonprofit that focuses on benchmarking and best practices, says
APQC research shows that some hiring managers appear to be structuring
evaluations to find candidates who, with little training, could be successful
hires. This creates a long-term problem, she says.

"In these situations, hiring managers are heavily focused on
finding candidates that exactly meet a specific, short-term need instead of
aiming to select candidates who are best-suited to evolve with the open
position and the organization," Tucker says.

In the case of technical or science, technology, engineering and
mathematics fields, there are not enough workers who possess constantly
changing and increasingly specific combinations of education, skills and
experience that employers seek, prompting many hiring managers to select
candidates who are ready to perform at full speed on day one, she says.

While skill-specific skill sets can be crucial to filling an immediate
need, Tucker says HR managers must ensure that they concentrate on short-term
and long-term talent needs and build a pool of candidates at the ready when an
opening arises.

APQC research has pinpointed a handful of other practices that can
help companies augment hiring-manager evaluations to boost the number of
successful hires:

* Source talent from places and
using methods that have paid off in the past, such as recruiting talent from
schools that top performing employees attended and use employee referral
programs.

* Create a comprehensive onboarding program
that starts upon offer acceptance and leverages social networking tools,
training courses and mentoring.

Measuring for attitudes that suit company
culture can be overlooked in hiring processes and evaluations as well, says Angela
Hills, executive vice president at the recruitment process outsourcing firmPinstripe
Inc., headquartered in Brookfield, Wis.

"It is key to have skilled
recruiters who also are experts at behavioral interviewing techniques,"
she says. "Train your recruiters to use open-ended interview questions
that specifically target the candidate’s work ethic, personality on the job,
work-style attitudes and workplace values.

"The responses will help
gauge a candidate’s passion and how they relate to the organization’s brand, vision
and values," she says. "Candidates who are a strong cultural fit will
usually have a story to tell that directly reflects the question’s underlying
corporate value."